of humble belief ennoble and sanctify past unwitting error, by the increased splendour with which they illumine truth. If, however, predominating pride of intellect or knowledge, which are the essence of the spirit of heresy, will brook no opposition, much less can the will of God tolerate obdurate resistance. The heretical animus and Rome must, therefore, be for ever arrayed against one another in irreconcilable antagonism. Heresy, says Bossuet, instinctively hates the Pope, because he always strikes the first and the final blow at every innovation. Yet unbelief, schism, and overt heresy, are perhaps less dangerous, and are certainly less insidious enemies of faith than that semi-acquiescence, under protest, in doctrine and discipline, engendered by personal and national pride, obsequiousness to wealth, power, distinction, learning, and false shame among some who call themselves Catholics. These latter are a corrupting element inside of the camp. They represent the repugnance, in unregenerate nature, of the worldly, respectable, influential, and ambitious, within the Church, uncompromisingly to recognize the admonitions of our Lord :"He that is not with Me is against Me;" "Whosoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in Heaven;" "The love of the world is enmity to God." Venially guilty, comparatively, in this class are the very earthy, common place earthlings, distinguishable by their cowardly horror of the word ultramontane; by their thinskinned dread of being sneered at as "Jesuits;" by their solicitude not to be considered behind the spirit of the age, illiberal or narrow-minded; and by the demonstrative courtesy and spirit of conciliation with which they meet, more than half way, the propitiatory advances of Mammon, mindless that whoever is not his enemy is his slave. "Ashamed of Jesus," as represented by his Vicar in Rome, they incur the double doom, that our Lord will be "ashamed of them at the last day," and that what is bound on earth by S. Peter or his successors, shall be bound in heaven. More culpable and prolific in evil are the lineal descendants in that long line of monarchical restrictors of the liberty of the Church, which, in every century, has waged active war against the inalienable supremacy of the Holy See. The cupidity and jealousy of no Christian government, since the time of S. Peter, have failed, at some time or other, to extort the unwilling remonstrances of Rome; nor have sycophantic adulators of the tyrannical excesses against which it has protested, been wanting, even among recreant patriarchs, bishops, and priests, false to the oath of obedience without which they could not have been ordained or consecrated.* The traditions of the Apostolic Roman Church, adjusting the practical mode of communication between man and the Divinity; directing how belief should manifest itself in external forms of worship, private devotions should be conducted, and vocations be determined on and adopted; drawing the line that marks what is due to God and what to Cæsar; and interpreting questions of doctrine, Scripture, discipline, morals, law, philosophy, and to a certain extent history-pronouncing what is to be regarded as certain, probable, or doubtful-are the normal rule which every humble, well-instructed Christian must abide by, and in resisting which "rulers of the earth have imagined a vain thing," and many "wise and learned" have stumbled. The dark side of the domestic history of the Church is its unbroken chronicle of great kings, great nations, supported by the zeal and enthusiasm of literary genius, encroaching upon the liberties of the Church by arrogating to themselves some prerogative bestowed by Christ exclusively upon S. Peter and his successors. There is no country that has not raised the standard of revolt against the supremacy of Rome. Gallican liberties; obstructed intercourse with Rome of the churches of Spain, Portugal, the West Indies, Brazil, Central America, Mexico, and Poland; Austrian emancipation from its guidance until the inauguration of Francis Joseph I.; the severe anti-Roman laws of the greater part of the states of Germany; the ferocious persecution of Romanism in Switzerland and Italy; the war of Lammenais, his disciples and ex-disciples, who are still too much infected with a portion of the deadly poison his subtle influence left in their souls; Kaiserlich-Königliche catechisms, and theological text-books, forming the enforced basis of ecclesiastical educa 66 *When the Holy Father bestows the hat upon a Cardinal elect, he says:Recipe galerum rubrum, . . . per quod designatur quod usque ad mortem et sanguinis effusionem, pro exaltatione sanctæ Fidei, pace et quiete populi Christiani, augmento et statu Sacrosanctæ Romanæ Ecclesia, te intrepidum exhibere debeas, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen." .... The following words form only a part of the oath of obedience of bishops elect before being consecrated according to the Roman rite :-"Ego Ñ, Electus Ecclesiæ Ñ, ab hâc horâ fidelis et obediens ero beato Petro Apostolo, sanctæque Romanæ Ecclesiæ, et Domino nostro, Domino Pio Papæ Nono, suisque successoribus canonicè intrantibus Papatum Romanum, et regalia Sancti Petri adjutor eis ero ad retinendum, et defendendum, salvo meo ordine, contra omnem hominem . . . Jura, honores, privilegia, et auctoritatem sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ, Domini nostri Papæ et successorum prædictorum, conservare, defendere, augere, et promovere adjuvabo, etc." Priests simply promise, before being ordained, obedience to their bishops, which of course includes acquiescence in the duty of bishops towards the Holy See. tion in the larger portion of the universities and episcopal seminaries of Central Europe, and corrupting the intelligences of rising generations; the rationalism of Germany's many Fröschhammers; the acrid hostility to Rome of the gifted Döllinger, and the too numerous admirers of that learned but erring man; have all been witnessed upon the hearthstone of religion, within the generation that includes the Pontificate of Pius IX. Who can impeach the Sovereign Pontiff's faithfulness to the trust committed to him, in appealing, in "our most unhappy age" to erudite Catholics to aid in combating the enemies of the faith; or his justice in perpetuating a periodical that has especially contributed to explain his condemnation of the blasphemies that have pullulated during his trying probation in the Vatican? His The Pontificate of Pius IX. began in sorrow, and may end in sorrow. The legend hath it of him, "Crux de cruce." His very first Encyclical complains of the "nefariæ molitiones contra Romanam Beatissimi Petri Cathedram, in quâ Christus posuit inexpugnabile Ecclesiæ suæ fundamentum."* Allocution of the 17th December of the following year relates to the gravissima damna. . . ob tristes rerum vicissitudines," that had overwhelmed the Church in Spain.† In 1848 he sent letters to Syria, for the purpose of healing discord and schism, by which souls were being hurried to perdition there. In an Encyclical letter from Naples, of the 8th December, 1849, he besought the co-operation of the bishops of Italy in resisting the spirit of insubordination that was laying hold upon the minds of men throughout the Peninsula. His first Bull after his return to Rome from exile, again mourns over the religious desolation in Piedmont; the imprisonment, by a Catholic monarch, of the Archbishop of Turin; and the deplorable dangers to which Christianity was subjected in Belgium.§ The year after he condemned a work, published by a false Catholic in Lima, violently attacking the Holy See; and a few months later he issued an Encyclical letter filled with lamentations over the state of Christendom generally. On the 27th of September, 1852, the persecution of the Church by the government of New Grenada elicited the Allocution: "Acerbissimum vobiscum." * "Qui pluribus;" Nov. 9, 1846. 66 "Noscitis et nobiscum." "Si semper antea," of May 20th, 1850. T In In a letter directed fourteen months afterwards to the hierarchy of France, the Pope reprobates Gallican perfidy; lauds the devotion to Rome of the French Episcopate, exhorting it to discourage publications against the rights of the Apostolic Church; because "the wicked enemies of the Catholic religion ever attack the Chair of the Blessed Prince of the Apostles, knowing that religion can never fall or slide back while she stands, whom the proud gates of hell can never conquer, and in whom is contained the entire and perfect solidity of Christian doctrine."* At the close of the same year, he protests against the invasion of the prerogatives of the successors of S. Peter, in Northern Germany, and deplores the unfilial conduct of the government of Hartz, and the sad state of religion in the West Indies. † 1854, he enumerated, in a letter to the Bishop of Fribourg, the injuries suffered by the faithful there, and lauds his constancy under affliction. Twelve and eighteen months subsequently, on the 22nd of January and 26th of July, 1855, appeared the two famous Allocutions-" Probè memineritis" and "Cùm sæpe," respecting the sub-Alpine persecution, excommunicating those who had taken part in the law suppressing religious communities. They were followed by another Allocution, of the latter date, denouncing the violence of Spain against prelates true to the Apostolic Church, and mourning over the deplorable state of religion in Switzerland. Next year he condemned and declared void the anti-Christian acts of the Mexican authorities, reiterated his anxieties concerning Switzerland, and expressed his execration of the horrible system of education forced by the government of South America (formerly under Spanish rule), and other South American governments, upon ecclesiastical seminaries, to the prejudice of the dignity of the Holy See, and of morality and piety among the people.§ In 1857, he condemned the works of Günther, lauding, however, his docility and ready submission to the sentence against him.|| The January following, the Sovereign Pontiff addressed an Encyclical letter of admonition to the prelates of the Two Sicilies, and on the 15th of November, the Instructio, "Etsi sanctissimus," against mixed marriages. In 1859, two celebrated Allocutions pronounced void the recent acts of the "Inter multiplices angustias;" 21st March, 1853. + Allocution in Consistorio secreto, 19th Decembris: "In Apostolicæ sedis fastigio." "Antequam ad nos pervenirent," 9th Jan. "Nemo vestrum ignorat." Allocutio" Nunquam fore putavissemus," die 15th Dec., 1856. sub-Alpine government; and renewed the major excommunication, confirming the decrees of the Council of Trent against assailants of the civil princedom of the Roman Pontiff.* Three Allocutions, and an Apostolic letter, in 1860, renew the protestations of the Pope against the violation of his territory; excommunicate anew the guilty; deplore the blameable conduct and duplicity of certain Catholic monarchs; and show the wickedness and absurdity of the principle of non-intervention. A fifth Allocution, at the end of the same year, dilates in censure of Gallican pretensions; exposes the troubled relations of the Holy See with Baden; and calls. attention to the bloody persecution of Christians in Corea, China, Cochin China, and Tonquin.† In 1861, the happy arrangement by which long existing difficulties between the Holy See and Goa had been partially healed, forms the subject of an Encyclical letter to the Archbishop of Goa of March 22nd; an Epistle to the Archbishop of Warsaw of the 6th of June, sets forth the care and paternal love of the Pope for the Catholics of Poland; and an Allocution of the 30th September depicts, with touching detail, the cruelty of the persecution waged by the sub-Alpine government in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, dwelling at the close upon the misery of the Church in Mexico and New Granada. On the 8th of July, 1862, in a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Lisbon and the other Archbishops and Bishops of Portugal, Pius IX. complains of their non-intervention in the canonization, a month previously, of the Japanese martyrs ;§ and on the 8th of December, he condemned the errors of Fröschhammer, placing his works upon the Index. In 1863, five Encyclical letters and an Allocution insisted upon the submission of every part of the Catholic Church to the Holy See. || Poland, Mexico, New Granada, San Salvador, Italy, and Germany, are, on various accounts, the subjects of these documents.T * Of 20th June; “ Ad gravissimum," and 26th Sept., “Maximo animi nostri dolore." "Nullis certè verbis," 19th Jan.; "Cùm Catholica Ecclesia," 26th Martii; "Omnibus notum," die 13th Julii; "Novas et ante hunc diem,” 28th Sept.; and "Multis gravibusque," 17th Dec. 66 + Ad reparanda damna;" "Cùm primùm ;” “Meminit unusquisque.” 8" Quò graviora." Epistola ad Archiep. Moacensen et Frisingensem, "Gravissimas inter." 66 Allocutio 16th Martii, "Omnibus notum." Epistola, "Non deve maravigliare," 22nd Aprilis. Ad Russiarum Imperatorem. Epistola Encyclica, Quanto conficiamur marore," die 10th Aug. Similis, "Incredibili afflictamur dolore," die 17th Sept. "Etsi maximo," Epistola 30th Novembris. Similis, "Tuas libenter," "die 22nd Dec. |